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3 or 5 gallon reef!?!?

19K views 17 replies 12 participants last post by  fishzord 
#1 ·
Good evening,
I was reading on another post on here about reef tanks that can be kept as small as 3 or 5 gallons. Do any of you have one? If so, how do you set it up? I'm not going to get one necessarily- and if I do it will be a great while from now - but I guess I just didn't realize that was possible. Would it be FO or FOWLR??? Or even corals???
 
#2 ·
i ran a 10 gallon..it done good for about 3 months then slowly died off over 4 more months..but i didnt use a bio-whell filter..if you can find one small enough it should sustain good..but expect to replace livestock often..cause coral will outgrow it fast.
 
#10 ·
I have an 8 gallon. Pretty cheap set up too (no biowheel; just a typical filter). It's been running for about...4 months now. It seems outrageous but with the amount of maintenance I do on it (practically every other day 10 to 15% water changes/tests), I've come to the conclusion that all I really need for it is a small power head (for water movement) and my power compact lights. Keep up your water changes (meaning use good quality salt mixture; make sure your pH is between 8.2 and 8.4) and you can't go wrong.

I think a lot of people associate the expression of "nanos are 'hard'." with "nanos are a little more work".
 
#11 ·
wow... this is all really interesting. I've seen tiny tanks before but I just assumed that you just had them for tepid water fish or something... I don't have any idea what filtration system or lighting I would do, but this is all great to know!
 
#12 ·
I have a 5.5gal with a hob filter with the heater in there. No filter in the filter, but it works great to keep the surface aggitated. 2 24w pc lights, and 1 gallon water changes with catalina ocean water from petco every week and things look great. It has been up for about 8 mos now and everything that started as frags are almost twice the size. I have this at my desk at work, and it will be my growout tank for frags to go into my 65 gallon.

Oh, yeah and it is much easier to do 1 gallon water changes than 15 gallon changes. I like nano.
 
#16 ·
well here is my JBJ PiCOTOPE 3g Its Been running for the past 2 months and was cold and salinity was skyhigh. Well 3 days ago i went and got a 25w heater and its been nice and warm then today i drove over to www.hellolights.com and i got a 36w Coralife PC light with two 50/50 Pc's.
Yesterday i went and got one small perc and a small yello gobie which i am going to move to my 100g in the next couple days. i fragged some zoos and glued them to some rubble and made my aquascaped finally. this tank is going to be pretty much all zoos and one perc. Thinking of getting a small carpet anemone then when it get big ill move it to the 100g As of now i am getting about 12w per gallon. well here are some pics of my 3g mini reef tank. oh and there is a hermit some were in there as a clean up crew.











http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/combiemaster/DSC00068.jpg
 
#18 ·
Either size is possible

I went with a 5 gallon set-up personally. I have an entire website dedicated to the build if you guys are interested in it. I have a .75 gallon tank that I find is extremely hard to maintain the temperature with. I ended up using a themoelectric pad underneath the glass cylinder to moderate the temperature. I have some info on that build too if you're interested.

nanosaltwatertank.com
 
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